CRIMINAL PROCEDURE I
SUMMER 1999
TAKE HOME FINAL EXAM
This is a twenty-four hour take home exam. It must be returned to Marcia Pinkman in the Administrative Suite within 24 hours after you pick it up. The rules governing this exam are contained on the attached cover sheet and must be followed carefully.
There is one question. In answering it, remember that I DO NOT want and will not give credit for a general discussion of the law. Rather, your exam should reflect a discussion of the relevant law and policy in the context of the given facts.
Restrict yourself, as much as possible, to the facts given. If additional facts are needed, state what they are and why, but do not change the facts.
You may type or write your answer. If you type, please double space. If you write, please write legibly and on only one side of each page.
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Officer Ortega was on routine patrol in his patrol car one evening when he heard a report over the radio. The report indicated that a suspect in an after-hours "smash and grab" at a jewelry store, a short white male, in his late 20's to 30's, with medium build and light hair, wearing a dark sweatsuit, was running north from the scene of the crime at 66th and Fairview and should be apprehended for investigation. Ortega was in a neighborhood just north of that address, so he kept alert. Less than five minutes later, he saw a white male, who he estimated to be in his 30's, walking briskly on Fairview in a northerly direction. The man was about 5'7" with sandy brown hair, wearing a navy sweat shirt and navy sweat pants. Ortega radioed his information to the dispatcher and requested back-up.
Officer Ortega pulled up alongside the man on Fairview, opened his window and called to the man, "Hold on a minute, I need to talk to you." The man just kept walking. Ortega drove several feet further down Fairview, stopped his car, exited and walked toward the man, who continued to walk north. "Where are you going? I said I need to talk to you." The man again ignored him. By this time, he was approaching 45th Street. Officer Bakkup, who had arrived at the scene in his marked police vehicle about a minute before, pulled his vehicle onto 45th Street, virtually blocking the man’s ability to cross the street. The man tried to go around the police car, but when he did so, Ortega came up on the other side and grabbed his arm. The man looked angry and upset, and Ortega decided to frisk him. The man was carrying a gym bag, which Ortega ordered him to drop. When he did so, Ortega kicked it away so the man could not reach it.
By this time, Bakkup had exited his vehicle and was assisting Ortega. Bakkup ordered the man to put his hands on the vehicle and Ortega frisked him. He felt a hard object in the man’s front pants pocket that he could not identify. He reached in and pulled it out. As soon as he did so, he saw it was a rolled-up wad of money with a $20 bill on the outside. He also immediately noticed that the color of the bill looked funny to him. While Bakkup kept his eye on the suspect, Ortega took out the counterfeit detector pen that he carried in one of his pockets and made a small mark on the outside bill. The dot turned dark brown, indicating that the bill was "suspect." (If the pen leaves no trace on the bill, it means it is genuine.) Ortega checked another bill in the roll and it also responded with a brown dot.
Ortega asked Bakkup if he had a hand-held counterfeit detector in his car, since the pens are not that accurate and need to be confirmed with the use of a device that uses a blue/black UV image tube to detect the hidden markings on genuine bills. Many police cars carry the device, but neither Ortega nor Bakkup had one in his car. Bakkup went to radio for a car to bring a device to their location. As he was about to get on the radio, he received a report that the real suspect in the "smash and grab" had been apprehended about a half mile away. Bakkup requested that a counterfeit detector be brought to their location as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, Ortega had asked the man for identification. The man gave him a license that showed that his name was Charles Cash. When Ortega tried to ask Cash about the funny-looking money, he responded, "I’m not talking to you. You have no right to hold me here. I’m just coming back from the gym, I have to get home to my wife, who is probably worried about me, and to my kids. I have nothing to say to you cops." Ortega had the man sit in the back of his police car while they waited for the car to arrive with the hand-held device. After about ten minutes, the device arrived. Ortega used it to test several of the bills in the roll, and all the bills failed to have the hidden treasury markings that one finds on genuine bills. Concluding that the bills were counterfeit, Ortega placed Cash under arrest. He was then searched more thoroughly, and additional counterfeit bills were found in his wallet and in a pouch in his gym bag. All the counterfeit money was seized.
Cash was taken to the station, booked and given his full Miranda warnings. He said, "I already told you how I feel about talking to cops; all I want to do is call my wife so she can arrange to bail me out of here." He was allowed to make his call and was taken to a holding cell to await arraignment. He went before the night judge, who set a relatively low bail, and was released when his wife arranged for bail.
The next morning, the case was turned over to the detective squad. Detectives Dan Davis and Ellen Evans were assigned to the case. They checked Cash’s record and discovered that he had been arrested for or suspected in a number of cases involving minor frauds or thefts, but he had only one conviction for a minor theft. He had never served time in prison. They asked some of their sources (both other officers and informants) about him and about whether there was any word on the street regarding a counterfeiting operation in town. They got some general information confirming what they suspected; that Cash was a small time operator not thought to be involved in any major criminal activity. In addition, no one had heard anything about counterfeiting, but their sources did agree to let the detectives know if they heard of anything. Because they were busy with other cases that had more leads, they put Cash’s case aside and nothing happened for a little more than a week.
One evening, as they were completing their report on one of their cases, Davis and Evans received a call from one of the officers they had spoken to regarding Cash. The officer just noticed a radio report of a domestic violence call from a woman with the same last name and his address. An officer was being dispatched to respond to the call and it was suggested they might want to join the officer when he did so. Davis and Evans thought this was a good idea and radioed to Officer Krupke, the responding officer. They told Krupke they could reach the address at about the same time he would, so they agreed to meet there. They arrived almost simultaneously and prepared to respond to the call.
Krupke, accompanied by Davis and Evans, knocked on the door of the house, which appeared to be a one-story, single-family home. A woman answered. She appeared a bit disheveled but did not appear injured. Krupke identified himself, introduced the detectives, and indicated they were responding to a domestic violence call. He indicated they would like to come inside, and the woman agreed. She began to apologize for bringing the officers all the way out to their home and said it was really all a big mistake. At that point, her husband joined her in the living room near the door and agreed. While Krupke was trying to get some information and figure out what was going on, Evans left the living room and walked through the dining room into an office/den in the back through a door that was slightly ajar. She began to look around. She noticed a piece of equipment attached to a computer that she had never seen before. It looked like some type of printer, but she wasn’t sure what it was. Using a small camera she carried with her, she took two pictures of the device. She didn’t touch anything and started toward the kitchen when Davis came and told her it was time to leave.
It seems that, while Evans was in the back of the house, Krupke and Davis had a conversation with Cash and his wife. They both insisted that there has been a mistake; they had had a verbal argument and she felt threatened, so she called police. When he realized she was upset, he apologized and everything was fine. No one had been hurt, they really loved each other and their kids, and neither wanted to make any trouble. After explaining most of this, Cash noticed that the female officer he had seen was no longer with the other officers. He asked where she was and was told she was checking the house for evidence of assault or other signs of a struggle. Cash said, "I don’t want anyone wandering around in my house. We told you everything is fine. Please leave." Krupke responded that they were required to take extra care on domestic violence calls, but he was sure they would be wrapping things up quickly. Cash expressed concern that he didn’t want his children, who were asleep in a back bedroom, to know the police were there. He again reiterated that everything was fine, they loved and respected each other, they didn’t need the police, and asked that they all leave. Mrs. Cash joined in this request. At that point, Davis went and got Evans and they all left the house.
Once they got outside, Evans and Davis thanked Krupke for his assistance and the two detectives went back to their office. On the way, Evans told Davis about what she had seen and the pictures she had taken. They went back to the station and arranged to have the pictures developed. The next day, they faxed copies of the pictures to an expert in counterfeiting. He indicated that the device looked like a sophisticated new machine that was being used by several printing companies but was also apparently being tried by counterfeiters. He told Davis that only one company, Canon Packard, manufactured the devices. Almost as soon as they got off the phone with the expert, they received a call from one of their regular informants who had provided reliable information in the past. He told the detectives that he had heard that the word on the street was that Reliable Printing, a large printing company in town, had recently gotten involved in counterfeiting and the owner was printing "funny money" after hours. Davis called Canon Packard and discovered that Reliable Printing was one of two companies in town to whom they had sold the new devices. In fact, Reliable had purchased four of them about two months before.
The detectives arranged for surveillance outside of Reliable beginning after dark. They parked down the street from the large brick building in which Reliable was housed. A surveillance van containing additional officers parked on the other side of the building. The detectives and the van remained in radio control. After waiting for about two hours with no activity observed, Evans noticed a garage door open and a small truck exit the building. As the truck passed them, they could see it was being driven by Cash. They let the truck drive for about a block and then began to follow. After several blocks, they turned on their lights and pulled the truck over. As they approached the truck, they saw Cash on a cell phone. They could hear him say "you’d better . . . ," but as he saw the officers approach, he hung up the flip phone. Davis radioed the officers in the van that they had Cash and directed that the others enter Reliable. Davis placed Cash under arrest while Evans searched the truck. She found several boxes of counterfeit money orders inside. Davis searched Cash and found counterfeit money in his pocket.
Meanwhile, the officers in the van forced their way into Reliable and entered both the office and the production area. At the dock near the back of the production area they found two individuals piling boxes next to a truck. A search of the boxes revealed counterfeit money orders. They arrested the individuals. Other officers found two men in the office area. They placed them both under arrest. One of the officers brought the men into the production area. As they were being led out to the waiting police van, the remaining officers searched the office and found a folder with several counterfeit money orders and a list of "Money Store"-type businesses and amounts. Believing this might be a list of those to whom the counterfeit money orders were being sold, they seized the list. Printing equipment that was being used to make the money orders was also seized from the production room.
All of the individuals who had been arrested were taken to the station. None of the four individuals who were arrested at Reliable was willing to talk to officers. Evans and Davis took Cash to an interview room. After giving him his full Miranda warnings, they said to him, "Look, you’re in deep trouble. We’d like to offer you an opportunity to help yourself." Cash responded, "I’m not interested." Davis responded, "Fine," and he and Evans started to leave. When they reached the doorway, he turned to Evans and stated, "I knew this guy was a jerk. He told us all that bull about loving his wife and kids, but he gets a chance to help them out, and he only thinks about himself. He claims he cares about his family, but he beats on his wife and now he turns down an opportunity that might give him a chance to spend time with his kids while they’re still kids. But these macho types, nobody can tell them anything. He may be just a driver, but since the others are pointing the finger at him, he’ll probably take the fall. We might as well call his wife and tell her the bad news."
Before they could get out the door, Cash called out, "wait, don’t call her. I’d rather call and tell her myself. And I do want to help my family. If I agree to talk, will you let me call her?" Evans responded, "Well, that depends. It depends on what you’ve got for us. We need it all." "OK, I’ll tell you everything, about the bills, the money orders, stuff you don’t even know about yet. As long as it can help me and I get to call my wife." Davis said that sounded reasonable, but that they needed some of the information "up front" in a show of good faith. Cash provided considerable information about the counterfeit bills, the money orders and other planned criminal endeavors. He then was allowed to call his wife, who told him not to say anything more to the police. He then requested an attorney and all questioning stopped.
Cash has been charged with possession of counterfeit currency and various offenses related to the counterfeiting and sale of counterfeit money orders. The owner of Reliable and the others involved in the scheme have also been charged. All relevant evidence is being admitted against each individual. Discuss all criminal procedure issues raised by these facts.